i actually can't teach until i've had a year of grad classes - i'll be working on a literary journal, or in the writing lab, or doing research for a prof..... congrats on being done! way to metriculate!
I agree. I think that's why I reacted so strongly against the Wager when you first explained it to me -- it's cold. It's more about fear than anything else, I think. If that's all your faith is based on, it's not going to get you very far in terms of joy and love and virtue.
As I sit here thinking about it, though, maybe it (and other intellectual arguments regarding faith) have a couple of different uses. They might be convincing to someone who's legitimately skeptical for intellectual reasons; and they're also good to have around in those moments when you'd just rather not believe. ("I'm not sure there's a god, so what does it matter if I'm acting like a jerk right now?") But yeah, Pascal's Wager is ultimately not spiritually satisfying.
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day, I paused and said, "I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther -- and we shall see." The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather -- The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled -- and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was gray and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labor of his ax, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
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Yay!
i actually can't teach until i've had a year of grad classes - i'll be working on a literary journal, or in the writing lab, or doing research for a prof..... congrats on being done! way to metriculate!
I agree. I think that's why I reacted so strongly against the Wager when you first explained it to me -- it's cold. It's more about fear than anything else, I think. If that's all your faith is based on, it's not going to get you very far in terms of joy and love and virtue.
As I sit here thinking about it, though, maybe it (and other intellectual arguments regarding faith) have a couple of different uses. They might be convincing to someone who's legitimately skeptical for intellectual reasons; and they're also good to have around in those moments when you'd just rather not believe. ("I'm not sure there's a god, so what does it matter if I'm acting like a jerk right now?") But yeah, Pascal's Wager is ultimately not spiritually satisfying.
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